


The Wager

by Josselin



Series: The Wager [1]
Category: Captive Prince
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 16:35:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5935306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Laurent came to the practice ring one afternoon, he lounged against the fence and watched Nikandros with an insouciant posture.</p><p>The Prince spoke. “Would you care for a match?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wager

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Kings Rising. Read that first. Huge thanks to Bea, Jenny, Dori, Luiza, and everyone else for their encouragement as I was writing. This is for you, ladies!

Damen hadn’t told Nikandros exactly what had happened at the Kingsmeet. He’d left with the Prince of Vere, and he’d returned alone, with blood on his tunic and clearly shaken and distraught. The Prince’s men had been upset, and Damen had buried his head in his hands and told them all that he needed to think, and then he had come out with a disturbing plan to turn himself over to his half-brother.

Damen hadn’t told Nikandros exactly what had happened with Kastor, either. Nikandros had been involved in the fighting to secure the palace against Kastor’s personal guard, and by the time he found Damen, Damen was already wounded, on the ground, and surrounded, being tended by the Prince’s personal physician Paschal with his head resting in the Prince’s lap. Both of them were covered in blood, this time, and there was one bloodied sword on the ground near them near Kastor’s body.

Nikandros arranged for the men to take Kastor’s body away and to help arrange for a pallet to bear Damen from the slaves’ baths to the king’s quarters. The Prince followed as though the golden cuff he wore on his wrist were attached by a short chain to the one on Damen’s wrist, and for some days after that it was impossible to be able to speak to Damen without his golden shadow.

Damen bore the attentions of the Prince’s physician impatiently, sometimes making side comments in Akielon about salves that caused the corner of the Prince’s mouth to twitch. The physician spoke to Damen more freely than was appropriate for speaking to the king, also. He responded to Damen’s grumbling with a smug reminder about how the physician had been right about this last time, and did Damen’s back pain him now? Did it tug when he wished to swing a sword around himself? No? Well then he ought to pay more attention to the physician’s advice.

To Nikandros, the physician’s comments were an unwelcome reminder that the besotted Prince sitting at Damen’s bedside was the same man who had tied Damen to a post and had him beaten almost to death; it was an unpleasant thought. Nikandros remembered the way Laurent had spoke of that moment, also, and the venom in his voice when he claimed the credit. 

Nikandros found himself taking over the role of the king’s advisor and the duties of the kyros of Ios. When he was not busy inspecting Kastor’s accounts or arranging for all of his slaves to now be employed as body servants per Damen’s latest pronouncement, he threw himself into physical training. He was nearing closer to thirty, and that was an age where it took more effort to continue to compete in the okton or on the field. 

So Nikandros was a regular at the practice ring. 

The Prince of Vere was not a regular in the practice ring. Damen had made a comment to Nikandros once about the Prince fighting beside him in the foothills of Vask. Nikandros would generally trust Damen to have an impeccable assessment of a man’s swordsmanship. But Nikandros found it hard to picture the fastidiously groomed prince sitting on his throne as the accomplished swordsman Damen had recounted. It was easy enough to see Damen’s besotted gaze upon the prince and question his judgment in this particular case. Of course, it might have been easy to fight beside Damen. Damen’s accomplishments on the battlefield were such that they might easily have made a partner appear stronger than he was. 

Nikandros had seen the okton, of course, and it was undeniable that the Prince was an accomplished rider, but he did not seem the type to train calluses into his hands in the practice ring.

When Laurent did come to the practice ring one afternoon, he lounged against the fence and watched Nikandros with an insouciant posture.

The Prince spoke. “Would you care for a match?”

Nikandros had asked Damen’s permission to duel the Prince, once, before the okton. It was the only honorable response to the injuries the Prince had inflicted upon their king, and the only response to the appalling arrogance the Prince had when speaking of it. Damen had denied that request.

“We could keep it friendly,” said the Prince. 

“We are not friends,” said Nikandros, but he found himself picking up his weapon and following Laurent into the ring regardless.

“Unless you wanted to wager,” said the Prince, unsheathing his own weapon. 

“Wager?”

“Loser sucks his cock,” said Laurent.

“I’m not waging my king,” said Nikandros.

“You like the odds too much?” said Laurent, starting to circle in the ring.

“Just because he has a weakness for pale hair and an asp’s tongue--” 

“Ah, and I thought we agreed to keep it friendly,” said Laurent. 

The remainder of Nikandros’s insult was lost with Laurent’s first attack. 

A blow that was more speed than strength almost caught Nikandros unprepared before he could block it. Laurent might be skilled, but Nikandros was a seasoned warrior. It would take more than a pampered palace boy to surprise him. 

He assessed Laurent’s skills in the first parries and held back with his own attacks. Damen would not be pleased if Nikandros injured the Prince of Vere, no matter who had started it. The ring echoed with the sound of metal meeting metal. 

By the end, Nikandros was on his back in the dirt, the sand clinging to his bare flesh. The tip of Laurent’s sword touched his neck gently. Every time Nikandros drew a breath in, he could feel the sharp kiss of the metal, like a lover’s touch.

Nikandros was breathing hard. Laurent’s face was impassive, and then transformed to a smirk. Nikandros heard footsteps approaching the ring. 

“What’s the meaning of this?” Damen walked in, taking in Nikandros on his back on the ground and Laurent with his weapon unsheathed.

“Hello, dearest,” said Laurent. He smiled, but his eyes were still looking down at Nikandros. “I’ve just won you a blowjob.”

Laurent abandoned the practice ring with a slight swagger in his step and a casual remark tossed over his shoulder about how Nikandros would explain.

Damen raised an eyebrow at Nikandros, who managed a stammered explanation. Nikandros contemplated getting off the ground, but given the shame of his defeat, perhaps it was better to stay where he was. 

“I am so sorry,” said Nikandros.

“It is typical,” said Damen.

“He wagers you frequently?” said Nikandros, heat rising in his voice again.

“No, I--” Damen sputtered, then stopped and laughed. He sat down, settling himself down on the sands near where Nikandros was sprawled, and he looked over at Nikandros with more fondness than Nikandros deserved, given the situation. 

“I think he knows it would not be your first taste of royalty?” He gave Nikandros a suggestive look harkening back to their younger days. “And he does not know what to make of that. So.”

“You’ve told him?” said Nikandros.

Damen shook his head. “He guessed.”

Damen offered him a hand, and Nikandros sat up. 

“Are you injured?” said Damen.

“He cheats,” said Nikandros. “He uses a boy’s tricks.”

He thought Damen would object defensively, as Damen often defended the Prince. Damen only grinned. “Yes.”

When Nikandros sat up they were close together on the sands. Close enough to touch. 

Damen did not release Nikandros’s hand after tugging him to a seated position. “I am learning to play him at his own games,” said Damen.

“I think I have had enough games,” said Nikandros.

“Have you?” There was something longing and playful in the tone of Damen’s voice. “I thought you might join me in this one.”

Nikandros tugged his hand free. “Speak plainly.”

“Have sex with me,” said Damen. “I have missed you. Fulfill the wager. Play Laurent at his own game.”

Damen reached for his hand again. Nikandros intently inspected his face. 

“I --” he hesitated, still uncertain about some sort of Veretian trickery. 

But when Damen leaned in and took his mouth, there was nothing Veretian about the way that he kissed.

He kissed in the same way that he had when they were boys, when Nikandros had to balance being two years older with the fact that Damen was his prince. He kissed as though everything he had ever wanted would be given to him. He tasted of apricots.

When Damen pulled back for a breath, Nikandros made a noise that came out like a half-sob.

Damen made an inquisitive noise. “ _Are_ you injured?” he asked, running his eyes over Nikandros’s form again.

“I thought you were dead,” said Nikandros. The grief of those months came back to him again. The expected loss of Theomedes, and then, all too suddenly on its heels, Damianos lost also. He had grieved Damen deeply. He had grieved Damen as his prince, and with all of the promise of the king he would have been. He had grieved Damen as a friend, and a brother-in-arms, and and as a companion. He had questioned himself over and over what he could have done differently to have caused Damen to listen to him. And then he had received that letter.

When he had been grieving, he might have given everything he had to have Damen back in front of him. He would have given Delpha, Ios, his own life, without a thought, for his king. He had told himself that repeatedly when Damen had returned, and then taken Delpha from him. _I would have given it for him in a heartbeat,_ Nikandros had told himself, making it almost a mantra he recited when he paced his tent or was trying to fall asleep. 

Now, Damen was in front of him, alive and whole and his hair cut in a foolish Veretian fashion and curling around his ears.

Nikandros leaned back in, and this time, he took Damen’s mouth. He held Damen’s head in his hands, and threaded his fingers into Damen’s curls, and kissed him as he thought he might never have the opportunity again. 

Damen scooted closer to him and pulled Nikandros half into his lap, as though they were just boys playing, and not grown men. Then, impractically, he started attempting to pull off his own clothing, the undressing all the more complicated because Nikandros was sitting half on top of him.

Nikandros felt his grief ebb further away in the face of Damen’s bitten-off curse, and soon they were laughing at each other, and then Damen dispensed with enough of their clothing and got his hand upon Nikandros and his laughter choked off in a gasp. 

They were pressed together closely enough that the oil from Nikandros’s workout was spreading all over Damen’s bare chest from the contact.

The grating squeal of the gate at the entryway to the practice ring interrupted them. Nikandros rolled off of Damen guiltily, and they both turned toward the door.

It was the one of the Veretian men, Jord.

Nikandros grabbed for his clothing, found Damen’s trousers first, and pulled them into his lap to cover himself. 

Jord was one of those men whose expressions showed clearly the thoughts in his head, and Nikandros could see his thoughts as he entered. He recognized Damen first, and then Nikandros, and then he wondered what they were doing, wrestling on the sands without their clothes, and then suddenly Jord knew what they were doing, and the betrayal that he felt at this was obvious.

“What are you doing?” Jord said. The question was addressed to Damen, in Veretian, and the way that Jord said it made the phrase not a tactical one, but a larger question of emotion.

“It’s not--” Damen started, running a hand through his own hair.

“Don’t lie to me,” said Jord.

Damen sighed. “He knows, Jord.”

“He will,” said Jord, “Because I am going to tell him.”

“He was here a moment ago,” said Damen. “In the practice ring. And there was a bet.” Damen began to look around himself for his clothing, saw that Nikandros was holding his trousers, and gave Nikandros a look before stealing Nikandros’s clothing. 

“Tell him,” said Damen. “He will not be surprised.”

It should not have been a reassurance; Nikandros had seen the Veretian Prince weather surprises without reaction. Jord must have known that; Jord’s skepticism was clear in his face. He turned on his heel and left the practice ring. The grate made a metallic noise again as it swung closed behind him.

Nikandros waited. The atmosphere of the ring had changed, somehow, and he was no longer a man reunited with his brother in arms. He was a man waiting for an order from his king. If he were to speak to Damen, he would not say his name, or the childhood nickname that Damen still permitted him to use. He would say Exalted.

Damen said, “You have my trousers.”

They left the practice ring and parted ways in the east wing of the palace. The silence was heavy between them in the night. 

The following days, Nikandros kept to himself. He assumed that Jord had gone off to tell the Veretian Prince what he had observed, and that Damen had then talked with the Prince after that. Since war had not been declared between the two countries in the intervening days, and Damen and Laurent were still ruling jointly from their twin thrones in the great hall, Nikandros assumed that Laurent’s reaction had been as Damen had predicted.

The Prince was leaving the palace for a few days; he and Makedon were going hunting with some of their men. Nikandros was waiting for them to leave so he could speak to Damen; he had several questions about the accounts in Ios.

When Nikandros went looking for Damen, however, he found that the Prince’s departure had been delayed, and the hunting party was still in the courtyard. 

Damen had been forbidden the hunting expedition by Paschal, who was still fussing over his wound. He stood instead next to Laurent’s horse, looking up, talking to the Prince. Damen’s hand rested on Laurent’s calf, enclosed in the Prince’s leather riding boot.

Jord, also dressed for riding, was waiting on his horse nearby.

Nikandros had just decided to wait to approach Damen with his questions when Laurent spotted him. Laurent’s gaze toward the corner of the courtyard caused Damen to turn and look, and then Damen waved him over with one hand. His other hand was still resting on Laurent’s boot. Makedon was talking to one of the farriers. 

“Have you come to collect your prize?” said Laurent. His eyes flicked from Jord, to Damen, and back to Nikandros. He spoke in Akielon so it could be clear that he was addressing Nikandros, and there was something lazy in the way that he spoke that belied the taut posture of how he sat in the saddle.

“I am not--” Nikandros said.

“I didn’t know Akielons were so hesitant to make good on their bets,” said Laurent. “I will have to consider before I wager with one again--”

In contrast, Nikandros felt quite ready to challenge Laurent to a second duel. Even if Laurent beat him a second time, it might be worth it for the chance to put the Prince on his back on the ground.

Damen laughed. He let his hand drop off of Laurent’s boot, and he stepped closer to Nikandros and draped an arm over Nikandros’s shoulders. “Old friend,” Damen said. “You are too easy to rile.”

Laurent was smirking. “You say that like you didn’t--”

Damen cut him off by raising a warning hand, still smiling, and then they were all interrupted by Makedon. He had finished speaking with the farrier and had mounted his horse.

“We ride?” he said, speaking to Laurent.

“Yes,” said Laurent, and he raised a hand to signal they were moving out. Over the sounds of the horses’ feet on the cobblestones and the dogs barking excitedly as they left, Nikandros could hear Laurent say to Makedon. “How would you feel about a wager?”

They watched the hunting party leave the courtyard, and the noise of the horses and the dogs subsided slowly into the distance, blending with the normal noises of the palace servants and the hum from the market just outside the walls.

Damen’s arm still rested warmly on Nikandros’s shoulder, though his eyes were on the gate. Soldiers were pulling it closed behind the departed hunters, but Damen’s eyes were unfocused, as though he were somehow staring through the wall and further out into the distance.

“It is his way of giving his blessing,” said Damen. But he did not push the matter when Nikandros did not speak of it further. 

They spoke instead, in the following days, of matters of the kingdom, of a meeting of the kyroi, of how to assign the conquered keeps in Sicyon. The physician continued to inspect Damen’s injury and finally pronounced that Damen was healed sufficiently to resume training, and then Damen began to come to the practice ring again, and they spoke of the fighters, and of the exercises, and of the training master they remembered from when they were boys.

 

The hunting party returned successfully. There was a feast on the first night of their return. The meat was roasted, and served tender and flavored with spices. In the hall, it seemed that every man in the hunting party gave a toast, and each toast was followed by excited drinking and congratulatory slapping on the back. 

The Prince garnered some attention by leaving the feast relatively early, and by doing so by raising an eyebrow in a deliberate invitation at the king. Damen’s obvious haste to rise and follow Laurent out of the hall caused a murmur of affectionate laughter through the men, and then Makedon raised his tankard and said, “A toast!” and the joviality continued.

Nikandros had hoped that by the time the hunting party returned, that Laurent would have forgotten their wager and lost interest in the game. Like so many of his hopes about Laurent, it was a vain one. 

Instead, Laurent had taken to needling Nikandros about it at the least appropriate moments. When he came upon Damen and Nikandros discussing business, he said “Why aren’t you on your knees?” 

Or Laurent walked up behind Nikandros standing on the rampart wall, watching the unloading of one of the ships in Ios, and said, “Do you require instruction?” with a tone to his voice that implied exactly the type of instruction he was thinking. 

Nikandros knew, in his mind, that his reaction was exactly the reason that Laurent persisted in these comments, but he still found it very hard to control himself, and spun around at Laurent’s taunted offer of instruction only to have Laurent offer, slyly, “I know what he likes.”

Several weeks of teasing resulted in at least three occasions where Nikandros had narrowly resisted punching the Prince of Vere. Nikandros complained about it to Damen, finally. It was evening and they were walking through the fruit orchard. 

Damen found a peach that was nearly ripe on a low branch of one of the trees, and plucked it.

“I have told you the way to play his game,” said Damen, “and you are not interested.” He tossed the fruit from one hand to another.

“Having sex with you is his game,” said Nikandros.

“Yes. We should do it somewhere he will observe.”

Nikandros felt almost embarrassed just thinking of it. For the king to be observed so intimately; it was almost unthinkable.

“I told Paschal we were planning a walk this evening,” said Damen. “So this will probably work.” He took Nikandros’s arm and pushed him to sit on one of the low stone benches in the orchard.

“Hold this,” Damen said, pressing the peach into his hand.

“What--” said Nikandros, and then, when Damen went to his knees in front of the bench, a shocked, “Damianos!”

Even as a boy, Damen had been too giving in sex. He reciprocated when it was not the role of the king to get down on his knees. It was one of the reasons Nikandros worried about his string of blond lovers--Damen was vulnerable to them because he made himself vulnerable to them, because his nature was too trusting and too giving.

“This was not the wager,” Nikandros said, in an urgent whisper. Damen paused to lift his head and smile. 

“We can do that next,” Damen said, resuming. They did.

It did not seem to work for Damen’s game with Laurent, though, because as far as Nikandros could tell, Laurent did not know. He did not interrupt them in the middle of the orchard, though Nikandros had been half tense the entire time, waiting for that moment when he emerged as a beehive full of stinging remarks.

Afterward, Nikandros said, “He didn’t come.”

Damen, because he was smug and insufferable, said, “I did.”

Nikandros punched him in the arm, not gently.

Damen laughed. “Well, then we will do it again.”

 

They did it again. A second time, in the stables. And a third, in the practice ring after Damen had sent all of the other men away. A few days later they went riding together, and then tied the horses’ reins to a tree, and there was a fourth time.

The Veretian Prince showed no sign of knowing. Damen’s eyes in the great hall still rested fondly on Laurent, and they had installed themselves together in the same set of rooms in Ios, those traditionally reserved for the king. Nikandros felt as though he were walking into a Veretian hunting trap, and at any moment a net would come up from under him and he would be caught hanging upside down from a tree.

Damen seemed to be treasuring their encounters with the same honest joy he had shown in their youth, and just laughed with Nikandros asked him if the plan was working. 

The fifth time was after a party, where Laurent and Makedon had become immersed in an intense discussion of tax code, and Damen had begged off and retreated to bed. Damen caught Nikandros’s arm in the hallway and tugged him along. 

By the time the Prince walked in, Nikandros had forgotten that they were playing any sort of game. He and Damen had shed their clothes in a heap on the floor and were play-wrestling on the bed, Damen shouting with real triumph when he managed to pin Nikandros beneath him. Nikandros accepted this defeat gracefully, and adjusted the pillow under his head to provide a comfortable position as Damen fed him his cock. 

Nikandros didn’t think Damen saw Laurent when he first walked in. The Prince had a way of moving that was silent, like a fox, and Nikandros shoved at Damen’s hips to get him to move when he realized from the corner of his eye that they were being observed.

“Don’t stop on my account,” said Laurent, and then Nikandros was certain that Damen hadn’t noticed him come in, because he reacted to Laurent’s voice, tensing and turning his head.

Nikandros started to worry that even if the Prince might have accepted Nikandros performing oral sex on Damen in the practice ring at the conclusion of a bet, that perhaps it was a transgression to be rolling around with Damen in Laurent’s own bed.

Laurent approached the bed. Nikandros could hear the click of the heels of his boots on the marble floor.

Damen had moved enough on the bed that he and Nikandros were no longer touching, but they were close enough that the space of a breath would have put them in contact again. The Prince was carrying a candle. A drop of wax spilled down the side. Nikandros could see the wetness of his mouth drying on Damen’s cock. 

Damen was breathing heavily. Laurent came up behind him and rested a hand on Damen’s flank. 

“He was using his mouth,” said Damen, as though that were something that needed to be stated aloud.

Laurent sounded cool, as though he were debating tax code. “I don’t think I have to,” he said, idly moving one of his hands over Damen’s torso. It had a proprietary manner to it, something of the air with which an aristocrat might treat a favorite horse. “Continue.”

There was a long moment of silence where all of them waited to see if Damen would follow Laurent’s direction. He did. He moved closer to Nikandros again, and his cock hit Nikandros’s lips, and Nikandros opened his mouth obligingly.

“That’s very good,” said Laurent. Nikandros closed his eyes and fantasized about knocking the blond prince over in the ring.

“I’m going to come,” Damen said, and his hand tightened in its grip on Nikandros’s shoulder, and Nikandros prepared to swallow.

Laurent’s voice cut the tension like an assassin’s knife in the dark. “No.”

Damen made a distressed noise, pulling back from Nikandros.

“I--” Damen bit off the rest of his words. Nikandros could feel the tension in his body, the strength of the grip on his shoulder.

“You don’t,” said Laurent, “Unless I say.”

Damen closed his eyes, his face a rictus of desperation. Nikandros could see Damen steel himself in the same manner he did when his sword was knocked from his hand in the ring, and then he opened his eyes, and moved across the bed.

“Fine,” said Damen. “You first.” 

Laurent did not say anything. Damen began unlacing the Veretian Prince’s jacket with an easy familiarity, his large hands moving easily over the laces, tugging at the fabric and peeling it away to reveal the fine linen shirt beneath. Laurent did not make any particular effort to facilitate this process, but he neither did he attempt to stop it.

Nikandros sat up on the bed behind Damen, and then glanced toward the door. “I am going--”

“Stay,” Damen said. It was the plea of a man to a friend, not the command of a king to a soldier. Nikandros hesitated. If he made a formal request to leave, he was sure that Damen would not deny it.

Laurent transferred the candle he was holding from one hand to another to allow Damen to pull the jacket over his arms and drop it to the floor. Damen eyed his shirt, next, and took the candle from him and handed it to Nikandros across the bed. “Hold this,” Damen said. 

Without the candle in Laurent’s hands, Damen was free to pull his linen shirt off over his head, and the Prince’s chest was left bare. Damen moved his hands to Laurent’s trousers. 

Nikandros averted his eyes politely, and looked instead at the candle. A drip of wax fell down the edge and slowed just before it would have touched his finger at the base of the candle. The beeswax was lighter than his skin, or Damen’s, but darker than the Veretian Prince’s. 

When Laurent was undressed, Damen pushed him down to the bed. Laurent lay sprawled where Damen had put him, wearing only the golden cuff on his arm that matched the one Damen always wore. The candle cast warm flickers of light across his body. Laurent let his arms spread across the width of the bed as though he were entitled to the entire mattress and the kingdom, as well, and one of his knees fell open to the side. He was not as aroused as Damen, interrupted just as the moment he was going to finish, but Laurent was not unaffected.

“It is not very polite,” Damen said, “for you to taunt my friends and barter my sexual favors.” Nikandros had observed that while both Damen and Laurent were fluent in each of their languages, they tended to speak Veretian to each other. This often grated on Nikandros’s nerves; just another sign of the Prince’s power over Damen. But when Damen had fallen into speaking Veretian at Laurent’s arrival this evening, Nikandros did not even think that Damen had noticed.

Laurent’s face did not show an expression at Damen’s words, but other parts of him seemed to be reacting. Damen was watching him closely; the weight of his gaze on Laurent was heavy. Damen stretched a hand toward Nikandros for the candle; Nikandros gave it to him wordlessly.

“What if I made a wager with Nikandros about you?” said Damen. 

“Did you?” said Laurent. His eyes were focused on the candle, which Damen was now holding over his torso. 

“Nikandros is going to help me,” said Damen, and he signalled Nikandros across the bed with the same hand gesture that he used to call men to him on the battlefield. Nikandros obeyed. “Use your mouth,” Damen said. “But softly.”

Nikandros bent slowly to this task, waiting for any sort of objection from the Prince. There was none. It was not like when he sucked Damen. Damen placed his hands in Nikandros’s hair, and tugged, and expressed his appreciation with his voice and the trembling of his thighs. Laurent was as still and as quiet as a statue.

Damen did not seem to consider this unusual. He watched Nikandros for a moment, and then turned his gaze back to Laurent’s face. Then he dropped his gaze from Laurent’s face to the candle he was holding, and, slowly, angled it slightly to one side.

A small drop of beeswax spilled out over the top edge of the candle, and fell through the air to land on Laurent’s chest. It was a hand-span away from his nipple. Of course the Prince made no reaction, but Nikandros could feel the pulse of his cock within his mouth. Damen was watching Laurent’s face intently, and then he moved his hand with the candle a few inches to the right, and tipped it slightly to the side again.

Nikandros could feel Laurent’s reaction again, and this time the Prince took in an audible gasp of air. 

Damen seemed to be finished with the candle, because he raised it to his lips and blew it out quickly, then leaned over to set it off beside the bed. The golden cuff on Laurent’s wrist glinted in the moonlight through the window and the sudden darkness.

Laurent sat up partially, and reached for Damen, using his hand. “If you come first,” said Laurent, “Then you have to let him fuck you.” Nikandros felt as though the air had been suddenly stolen from the room; lightheaded as a man on a mountaintop. 

“If you come first,” said Damen, “Are you going to let him fuck you?”

“No,” said Laurent. “I won the duel with him,” Laurent said, placing emphasis on the word won. “Therefore I--”

“I won,” Damen interrupted.

Laurent’s breath was becoming increasingly uneven, Nikandros could taste salt at the tip. Laurent said something half-choked in Veretian that Nikandros couldn’t make out.

“I am always going to win,” Damen said, leaning in to speak into Laurent’s ear, and Laurent finished.

Nikandros swallowed the first pulse, and then pulled away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. 

Laurent pushed them both away and padded away from the bed in bare feet. He was a pale shadow walking across the room in the darkness. Damen did not seem surprised by this retreat, either, and watched him for a moment before turning to Nikandros beside him. Damen brought his thumb up to Nikandros’s face to catch a drop that had spilled on his bottom lip, and then took his thumb to his own mouth. Nikandros’s eyes widened, and then Damen pulled him in so their mouths met.

Damen parted Nikandros’s lips with his tongue and then took his mouth with an air of command, as though it too were part of his kingdom and his entitlement. Damen’s kiss had a lazy air of confidence that belied the fact that he had yet to finish himself. 

Damen finished the kiss with a pleased noise of satisfaction, and refocused his attention to his left. Nikandros turned his head. The Prince was there, with a strangely diffident posture, standing beside the bed. 

Damen and Laurent were having some sort of conversation that only involved their eyes, and the way that they met across the bed. After a moment, Damen was the victor, and Laurent lowered his gaze and climbed up on to the bed next to Nikandros, and reached for Nikandros’s cock to stroke it, firmly.

Nikandros gasped. Damen nodded approvingly.

Laurent began to speak, and perhaps because his comments were directed now at Nikandros, he spoke in Akielon. “When we fought,” he said. The movement of his wrist paused for a moment, and Nikandros craned his neck up to determine why, and he saw that Damen had produced a phial of oil and poured some helpfully onto Laurent’s hand. Laurent continued, and Nikandros moaned slightly. “The left-handed block that you used at the far side of the ring,” Laurent said. “How did you start that? It was an effective move; I want to learn it.”

The wrist Laurent was using on Nikandros was the same one wearing Damen’s cuff. 

“For the block, do you step first with the right foot or the left?” Laurent said, as though there were any hope Nikandros could carry on a conversation with him at this moment. 

“Gorgon’s defense,” said Damen, nodding. Without seeming to realize it, he had followed Laurent and was now speaking Akielon again as well. “You step first with the left.”

Laurent made a small noise, considering, and then the wash of their conversation was lost to Nikandros as he finished, all of his attention focused only on the pulsing of his own body. 

When his climax subsided, Damen was stroking his hair gently and laughing fondly. Damen pressed a kiss to Nikandros’s forehead, and then relaxed back against the pillows. Laurent was poised next to him with something of the air of a cat, contented and yet arrogantly hesitant.

Damen moved his hand from Nikandros’s hair back to his own cock; he had not been able to finish. Nikandros was still catching his breath. On Damen’s other side, Laurent was watching Damen intently, his eyes flicking between Damen’s face and the movements of his hand. 

Damen’s eyes were on Laurent. “I think I will forgive you for wagering me,” he said, in Veretian. 

Laurent made a small motion of his head, as though this concerned him very little. “He is the one who lost the bet.”

“He already apologized,” said Damen. “He got down on his knees to do it. Are you going to get down on your knees?”

“No,” Laurent said. It was not a convincing denial. 

Damen shifted his hips to fuck into his own fist, slowly. “I am close,” he said. “Laurent, please--”

And Laurent said, “Yes,” and Damen finished with a cry.

Laurent had brought a cloth with him when he returned to the bed, and after Damen had spilled, Laurent cleaned him gently, seeming fastidious.

Nikandros shifted his weight from his sprawl against Damen’s side, thinking that a wise commander knows when it is the correct moment for retreat. Damen’s hand reached out and caught his arm, tugging him back down to the bed. Nikandros touched the gold cuff that Damen was wearing. It was soldered on, and would need a blacksmith to remove it. 

Nikandros reclined back on to the bed, settling his weight against the mattress. 

He could see Laurent’s arm spread across Damen’s chest. The cuff on his wrist had a clasp, and could be removed like any type of jewelry, but Nikandros had not seen him without it since Damen had presented it to him in the first announcement of their campaign, when Nikandros had watched with a sinking feeling in his stomach that it was the worst kind of bedding gift. 

Veretians laid traps, he had been thinking then. They laid traps with honey and then stung like hornets. They did not fight honorably, but twisted a man up in lies and then tangled him to a place that he never thought he would be. 

He had perhaps been more right and more wrong than he had known, and as he drifted off to sleep he felt a gentle caress against his forehead.

 

The morning was less awkward than Nikandros thought it might have been. By the time he awoke, Laurent was already gone, having slipped from the bed quietly and without a sound. Nikandros followed suit, shifting quietly away from Damen, and reaching for his discarded clothing spread across the floor. 

He looked back at the bed from the doorway, his clothing pulled on haphazardly and half still in his arms. Damen’s eyes were half open, and Damen smiled at him warmly, and Nikandros found the smile as irresistible as Damen’s had been when they had been boys getting into trouble, and he smiled back, and left.

The following day, Nikandros was finishing his workout in the practice ring, when he heard the gate open. Damen entered, and Nikandros froze in the middle of the forms, and then let his arms and the sword lower to his sides as Damen walked across the sand. 

There was a moment between them when Nikandros wondered what Damen was going to say. 

“Perhaps we should work on Gorgon’s defense,” Damen offered, lifting one of the other practice swords off the rack on the wall. 

Nikandros laughed, for of all of the things that Damen might have said, somehow he had not thought of that one. 

“Shoring up my weak side as always,” said Nikandros, smiling. “All right.”

Damen attacked, and Nikandros stepped with his left, and blocked. He was good at Gorgon’s defense, it was one of the drills he had excelled at in their training as boys.

“Very good,” Damen said, his voice rich with approval. Damen laughed, and the sound echoed throughout the practice ring. “Perhaps you and I should place a wager.”

**Author's Note:**

> [All of the author's Captive Prince fanfic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin/works?fandom_id=3516977), [come follow me on tumblr](http://josselinkohl.tumblr.com/)


End file.
